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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

SO053

The moderating effect of social capital on the relationship between peer victimization and depression in schools: a cross-sectional examination of multilevel interactions among Japanese students

THE MODERATING EFFECT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL ON THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN BULLYING VICTIMIZATION AND DEPRESSION IN SCHOOLS: A CROSS-SECTIONAL EXAMINATION OF MULTILEVEL INTERACTIONS IN JAPANESE STUDENTS

School-level social capital attenuated the individual-level relationship between bullying and depression, whereas individual-level social capital showed no such moderating effect.

The aim was to examine, using student-reported data, whether social capital (SC) moderates the relationship between individual-level peer victimization and depression at both the individual and school levels. Data from 2023 were drawn from a community-based prospective cohort study conducted in Hirosaki, Japan; the sample comprised 6,215 students in grades 4 through 9 (48.5% girls). Depression was assessed using the PHQ-9, victimization using the Japanese Bullying Scale, and social capital using the Social Capital Questionnaire for Adolescent Students; missing data were handled using full information maximum likelihood, and cross-level interactions were examined using a two-level random-effects model with Bayesian estimation. At the individual level, victimization was positively associated with depression (beta=0.27; p<0.001), while social capital was negatively associated with depression (beta=-0.40; p<0.001); the interaction between bullying and social capital was not significant (beta=0.00; p=0.482). At the school level, social capital was negatively associated with depression (beta=-0.45; p<0.001) and significantly moderated the relationship between bullying and depression (beta=-0.27; p=0.022); the model's explained variance values were R-squared 0.32 and 0.20. Simple slope analyses confirmed that the effect of bullying on depression was stronger in schools with low social capital (b=0.47; p<0.001) than in schools with high social capital (b=0.33; p<0.001). Because the 95% confidence interval for the slope did not include zero even in the high social capital group, the relationship between bullying and depression persisted; the authors therefore note that strategies to reduce bullying are needed alongside whole-school approaches to strengthening social capital. The cross-sectional nature of the study limits the ability to determine the direction of causality.

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